Seriously Disappointing Ending

[mark's edge78]

I personally loved the book, just as i do with all of King's novels and stories. But the only gripe i do have with most of his stories, is that i find most of his endings a bit of a washout.
But some people have got to remember an ending is always difficult to write in a book, espessially with such an intense build up. And King tends to write from the progression of the characters as they would in real life so he doesnt know how its gonna end himself alot of the time. Which for me is a good way of reading, it makes the story more real rather than getting from A-B in a very formulatic way. So i love the unique progression which King takes you down as a fair account of life within whatever make believe situation he creates them in.

In my opinion alot of people moan about the way Stephen King writes his books, but for me i love reading them, especially the detalied worlds you can lose yourslf in. Something that alot of writers out there seem to miss out on.

[Bryan James]

I personally loved the book...

I hope you sanitized it afterwards. A moist towelette, perhaps?

[no bounce no play]

I loved the ending. It seemed as though SK had it in mind from the beginning. I really really liked the anthill premise and the idea that one bully by itself is more likely to be persuaded to become compassionate than a group of bullies, whether they be human or alien. It was kind of a Twilight Zone moment... the most fearsome aliens are those whose thoughts and actions mimic our own.

I couldn't help but to think of an old Star Trek episode (The Squire of Gothos) in which the child of energy beings takes control of the Enterprise and its crew... not that it was all that much alike. In Dome, the energy children's parents didn't come to the rescue of the Chester's Mill's residents... like most human parents won't rescue an anthill.

[Karpediem]

Hello, I just finished this book last night and felt I had to search the web to see people's opinion's and how mine matched up. It wasn't too hard to find this forum and thread that got right to my main issue with it...the ending. My feeling matches those who also did not like the ending. I thought about it more and think I realize why I did not feel satisfied. For me, I would have liked a chapter from the alien's perspective. Once it was pretty clear that it was aliens who were responsible for the dome, I would have liked to learn more about them and why they were doing what they were doing. Is this "box" something one of the made, or stole from their parents that is supposed to be used for something else? If there was a group of them, were some unsure if what they were doing was right? I guess if I had a connection or better understanding of the aliens, it may have made the ending more satisfying.
Also, Rennie's death was lacking and Carter allowing him all those last requests was a little unbelievable for me and just predicted what was going to happen. Would have been better if Rennie was standing right there when Carter turned around after he decided he was going to shoot him while changing out the propane.

[CAMellie]

Hi! I'm new to the forums...so please be gentle. I just had to comment on Under The Dome. I've been an avid fan of SK for 25 years now...and I was HORRIBLY disappointed with the whole book! I found the characters lifeless, the plot plodding, and the end left me rolling my eyes and wondering why I even bothered reading the 1072 page tome.
Don't get me wrong, I'll always be an SK fan, but Under The Dome was awful! (In my humble opinion)

[knghtmare]

I loved the book, I thought it was very good and kept a pretty fast pace throughout the whole thing especially for being that long. I thought the ending was good, them realizing that if they were being considered as insignificant as ants that they better do something that would show the aliens that they were real living beings with real lives that they are killing and see if they would show them some mercy. And aren't stories as much about the journey as it is about the ending and I thought the journey was great. Keep up the good work Mr King!

[JRM]

Okay I know I'm new here so I hope my opinion isn't out of place.

I finally managed to get Under the Dome from my local library 3 weeks ago and spent much of that 3 weeks doing little else other than reading it. I was excited by the claim on the front "His finest epic since the Stand" and I LOVE The Stand and it remains one of my all time favourite books.

I really liked UtD. I devoured it. I hit one irritating chapter but it didn't last long and I didn't hold it against the book. But it was great! I was ready to believe the claim about it matching up to The Stand.

And then I got to the ending. Oh gods how disappointed was I? I had been talking to a girl on another forum about it and she kept telling me to come back with my opinion when I'd got to the end. Now I understand why. How on Earth King could justify an ending that weak, that quick, that....pathetic for lack of a better word, I really don't know. There's this huge build up to it. Fireball destroys vast majority of the town, surviving characters are dwindling faster than I can turn the pages. I was waiting for this huge impressive climax. But it never came. So one character decides to go whine at these alien kids and everything's all better? Sorry but I don't buy it.

I think my main issue was that it happened just too quickly. It was all over in, what, a page? Two pages? A whole 800+ page book and it boiled down to pretty much nothing. I dunno, I don't think I'm explaining myself very well. I was just sorely disappointed with the lack of imagination that went into it I guess.

Also I wanted Big Jim to have a more justified death. Not just a heart attack and then dying of sufforcating from sticking his air into the bad air. I would have preferred the police offer he was with (sorry names have escaped me and I've returned the book) to have shot him in the face and then police officer to die under the ground.

I've been reading this forum and know a lot of people really liked the book so I hope you don't mind me saying all this. I seriously loved the book too. Until about 10 pages from the end. Which is sad 'cause it means, although I enjoyed the rest of it, I won't read it again. 'Cause the ending left me feeling hollow.

I completely agree with everything you said. The only thing I would say is that I had more than a few irritating moments -- not just a chapter. It's not a bad book at all -- just a disappointing one. The ending was the worst part of the overall entertaining yet inconsistent book. I enjoyed the novel, though.

[no bounce no play]

May I say something else about the ending? as if anyone could stop me well... I guess Ms Mod could lol.

anyways... If the ending seemed rushed, it may have been somewhat due to that gigantic explosion... there just wasn't much time for the surviving townfolk to do much before they expired. I guess the story could have continued after they left the dome but I thought it ended where it should.

I also would have liked it if the aliens had been explained more ... probably because I'm a sci-fi reader... but, sometimes the reader shouldn't know more then the characters in the story know. Hard sci-fi has to be explained... good horror doesn't... imho

UTD might be one of those novels that, for some, are better on second read... especially if you thought the aliens would play a bigger role rather than just setting the scene. I liked The Stand lots better the second time I read it.

[Mr Nobody]

I held off commenting on UtD until it was finished...but even now I'm not sure I've absorbed it all. A lot of my reaction is still pretty much first reaction.

For me, the opening section of the book had some wonderful writing. I thought if that was the standard throughout, UtD was going to be a real treat. Of course, it wasn't (not consistently, anyway, and I hold no 'grudge' for that), but it never went all the way to bad...until some parts (not all) of the end. Like others, I was irked and surprised by the summary announcements of death. The fireball, no problems: it was the logical thing (in a way; I did wonder just where all that oxygen was coming from, considering the air getting into the Dome was insufficient even with massive fans blasting away). Some of the deaths felt arbitrary, too, leaving me thinking 'what was the point of them?'
But...maybe that WAS the point. It reflected life and the way some of us struggle on, look like we've finally won, and then get taken out by a bus as we cross the road to buy lunch. Same sort of deal with the aliens and general resolution. How many times have you heard of kids doing something, then offering up the excuse "Because we could"?
Big Jim...I wanted some very nasty things to happen to him, tbh - way nastier than he got. But again, when I pause to think it over for a time, his demise can be seen as SK demonstrating how he has little time for the holier-than-thou, 'I do this because God wills it so' brigade, and highlighting certain of that ilk as the self-seeking, self-righteous...erm 'people'...they are. For me, Big Jim's death also seemed to have an element of SK suggesting God has a sense of humour, as well as a stern 'Don't dare speak for me, sunshine' way of dealing with the supposedly devout (which has been shown before, elsewhere).

For all I think it over and take possible meanings, though, I can't help but have a general feeling of...not really dissatisfaction, and certainly not disappointment, but something close. It was almost as if SK got bored with the project after a certain point. I'm sure this wasn't the case and the ending was intended to be taken another way (or perhaps several other ways), but it's how it looks. There's a lot of 'rounding up' going on in the latter half or third of the book.
No doubt I'll read it again and again, and perhaps years hence will have a sort of epiphany, but for now I can only say that, for me, it's a good, not a great, book and the opening promises much - and perhaps that is the source of the flaw that prevents UtD from being an immediate classic (at least in my eyes).

[jalexbrown]

I just finished the book about six hours ago, so the whole ending is still very much fresh in my mind. That said, I thought the ending fit well with the overall theme of the book. The whole book had a sort of reality-show vibe to it, where you just felt like you were watching some sort of snuff show on HBO or Cinemax (after hours, probably right before Skinemax begins). Then the end rolls around, and you realize that's pretty much exactly what you were doing throughout the entire book. And when put in such a situation, what reaction seems more logical when you're on your last leg than begging for your life?

That said, maybe the ending was a little bit rushed. But, as King said himself in the Author's Notes, the whole book was supposed to be constant pedal-to-the-metal. Once the climax starts to resolve itself, that's the point when the writer is edging his foot off the pedal, letting up the momentum, and letting the story ride to its end on its own kinetic energy; any attempt to wrap up the book too early would have been premature, it would have made the last pages of the book become drastically slow, and it would have perhaps even ran out of that sacred kinetic energy before hitting the logical falling-off point.

Okay, so the one-liner deaths were an annoyance at times, but even that goes back to the pedal-to-the-metal philosophy with which King was trying to lace the story. As a writer myself, I understand that if you spend too much dwelling on something, you're losing momentum and pacing. If the book was designed to be a slow and intense ride, then that's fine; if the book was, on the other hand, designed to be a consistent thrill-ride, it just ends up dragging down the pace of the story.

As far as Big Rennie goes, the situation was like this: it was down to two people - Big Rennie and Carter. Despite the whole "fend for yourself" mentality that Rennie had tried to instill in Carter, Carter was never able to fully bring out that quality in himself. He looked at Rennie as a father, and he thought that Rennie looked at him as a son. But we see how Rennie's feelings towards his biological son deteriorated throughout the story, so who can be surprised that Rennie would be so malign as to stab Carter in the back (or, more appropriately, the stomach) when the opportunity presented itself? Killing Carter got to be Rennie's big final act of power before his own demise; anything less than that final moment of supreme power would have contradicted the whole book's setting him up as the powerful back-stabber. Had Carter walked out and just shot Rennie square in the face, it would have made Rennie look like a weaker character, much less powerful and quick-thinking than the book had presented him as being. Plus, it was totally in character for Carter to allow Rennie to have one final prayer, and that's what Rennie used to murder Carter. The whole scene played out with a sense of logic that kept every character in character, not ripping characters out of previously established attitudes or behaviors for the sake of giving Rennie his due justice. Besides, how many times in the real world does the bad guy get his due justice? King does indeed write stories with an honest, no sugar-coated layer to them; Rennie's ultimate demise was one such instance that I felt worked in creating that sense of reality as opposed to ideology that would have emerged from Rennie getting a pistol shot to the face.

Under the Dome worked very well for me, because it created a layer of consistent pacing very rarely found in any written work. It truly was pedal-to-the-metal throughout the entire book. Under the Dome is a great page-turner that will keep you up at night with the lights on, when it's two in the morning and you have to be up at five, promising yourself that you'll go to bed after just one more section. But you won't. And when five o'clock rolls around, and it's time to go to work...well, hopefully you've got the kind of job where you can read while you're working, because you'll want to keep reading until the end.